We Party With Wii Party

Share.

Mario's out and the Miis are in for Nintendo's latest mini-game celebration.

By Craig Harris

Mario had a good run. After nearly a dozen games in the Mario Party series across the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, and Wii, Nintendo's giving the plumber a break and putting its Mii avatars to work for the latest collection of four player mini-games. The Japanese version's been available for a few weeks now, but Nintendo swung by the IGN offices with a near final US bulild of Wii Party for a taste of things to come when it hits shelves in North America on October 4th.

Wii Party features 13 game modes that utilize approximately 80 different minigames that pit as many as four players against each other in both videogame challenges as well as physical competitions that use the Wii remotes in unique fashion.

Just like Mario Party, Wii Party's core experience is in a board game presentation. Roll the dice, walk the path, land on a space, and compete in a randomly selected mini-game. Unlike Mario Party, however, there's really only one board game map on this island – it resembles WuHu Island from Wii Sports Resort but officially the place has nothing to do with that location. For a little board game variety, there's another mode called Glob Trot where you'll wander around the entire world competing against other opponents instead of just a single volcano-and-dinosaur infested island in the middle of nowhere.

Exit Theatre Mode

Nintendo walked us (Nintendo Voice Chat podcast regulars Jack and Sam joined in the fun) through a few mini-games, including one where you tip the Wii remote to balance packages as they're stacked in your Mii's arms. In another, we played a bit of Musical Chairs, but in this game you used the D-pad to maneuver the Mii characters around the screen to stay in spotlights illuminating specific spots on the floor. There were times that a one-on-three battle popped up: in one, we threw logs at Jack by flicking the remote, while he tried to time his chops at the airborne trees to avoid getting hit. In another, it was a hide-and-seek competition where the three players picked a spot in a playground to disappear, and I was the player who was "it" and had to use the Wii pointer to choose spots on the playground where I thought people were hiding.

Another game mode, Bingo, used the system's Mii characters as game tiles. In the middle of the screen is a giant tub of balls with a Mii's face on it along with a handful of mini-game orbs – get a Mii, mark it on your card. Get a mini-game ball and you'll all compete to win. Five in a row on your game card makes you the winner.

Exit Theatre Mode

Along with the standard Mario Party-like minigames are some interesting Wii remote games that are much more fun with the maximum of four controllers. In one, you hide remotes in the room and make the other player or players try and find them based upon occasional sounds coming from the controller speaker. In another, you stack the remotes side by side, with players quickly scooping up the proper controller that makes the sound of the object on the screen. There's even a "Hot Potato" style game where players pass a controller between them, trying to prevent a bomb going off by pressing the proper buttons – move the remote too much (tracked by the accelerometer) and you'll set off the bomb prematurely.

Though we only got about 40 minutes with the game, it's pretty obvious that if you're into Mario Party you're going to dig Wii Party – unless, of course, you played Mario Party because of the Mario characters and game boards. We'll have the full review of Wii Party leading up to its October 4th release in the US.